In the middle of the 16th century St. Peters church in
Woolley contained much painted glass.In
the first light of the east window of the chancel was a figure of Sir
Richard
Woodrove who died in 1522 kneeling, behind him six sons, and beneath
that the
following inscription:

“Pray for the soul of Richard Woderove a soldier, son and
heir of John de Wolley Woderove, esquire, whose soul be with God."

Woodruffs in the 1881 UK Census

County

Numbers

Percent

North

Yorkshire

136

Lancashire

308

Sub-Total

444

32

Southeast

London

222

Kent

117

Surrey

64

Sussex

47

Sub-Total

448

32

Elsewhere

508

36

Total

1,400

100

William Woodruff's
Childhood in Lancashire

William
Woodruff was born in Blackburn in 1916.His grandparents had emigrated to Massachusetts and his parents
had,
rather unusually, returned to England to work as weavers in a
Lancashire cotton
mill.

William
was born during the Great War and into abject poverty. Two weeks
before his birth, his mother had received a telegram saying his father
had been
killed in France. On the day of his birth his mother received a second
telegram
saying there had been a mistake and that his father was alive. William
was
delivered two hours later in the cotton carding room of the factory.

The
extraordinary story of his Lancashire childhood was told in his
best-selling
book The Road to Nab End, a book that was on The London
Times best-seller
list for a year.

With
the collapse of the English cotton industry in 1920 the
Woodruff family became destitute. The cotton mills closed, half the
adults were
unemployed; people starved to death. The family had to move to a single
room in
a slum at Nab End.

Young
William was haunted all his life by the journey he took at the age of
six with
his mother to the seaside resort of Blackpool.During the day his mother would tell him to sit on a bench.From there he watched men, far better dressed
than any he had known, enter the hotel.Some came out with his mother.“You’re a grand lad,” some said, tossing him a coin or two.Billy Boy, as he was known, wondered why.

At the age of 13 in 1929 he left school to
become a
grocer’s delivery 'barrow boy.' After the wealthy grocer suffered
a stroke
William was lucky to get a job in a brickyard. At age 16 he ran
away to London.
He approached the unknown with resourcefulness and self-reliance honed
by hard
times. He always counted himself lucky to have been born in
Lancashire and
doubly lucky to have been born poor.

David Woodruff, Pioneer Settler in Muskingum County, Ohio

David Woodruff, born in New Jersey in 1773, was one of
the pioneer settlers of Muskingum county in Ohio, arriving there as
early as
1813.He came by wagon with a group of
people that included his wife and three children.

In making their journey from
New Jersey to Ohio, and after they had reached Zanesville on the way to
Brush
Creek, a commotion appeared in the brush.A number of the men, including David Woodruff, loosened their
dogs which
immediately pounced upon and killed a bear on the spot where the market
house
now stands.David Woodruff and his dogs
subsequently killed a bear where the Lutheran church of their township
now
stands.

Initially David Woodruff leased land near Stovertown and
he resided
there until around 1819.Then he
bought
80 acres of land where he built a cabin and began clearing the land and
improving his farm in various ways.He
lived on at his farm until his death in 1844.

Mollie Woodruff and the Haunted Woodruff Fontaine Mansion

Amos
Woodruff
grew rich from his carriage-making business in Memphis, Tennessee and
invested
in a large five story French-Victorian mansion located on what was
called
“Millionaire’s Row” on the outskirts of the town.The
woodwork was made of machine-carved solid
cypress.The total cost was estimated at
$40,000.Amos, his wife Phoebe, and
their four children moved into the mansion in 1870.

Their daughter Mollie married the next year and
inhabited the mansion’s Rose Room.That
was the room where she lost a young child shortly after childbirth.Three months after the death of the child,
her husband Egbert died in the Rose Room from a staph infection.Mollie was devastated but eventually
remarried and moved away.

Legend has it that Mollie’s ghost returned to her
father’s house and still roams the halls.Reports of haunting activity such as a smoke-formed apparition
of Mollie
have been reported by staff when they tried to update or move furniture
in the
mansion.Mollie apparently becomes upset
and makes her dislike of the re-redecorations evident by slamming doors
and
breaking things.Mollie has also been
reported seen sitting on the bed in the Rose Room.

Richard and William Woodruff and the War of 1812

William
Woodruff
served as a private in Crook’s Company at the beginning of the War of
1812 and
fought under Captain McClellan at the Battle of Queenston Heights, for
which he
gave a vivid account.Both he and his
brother Richard were awarded a land grant for their services during the
war.

Richard Woodruff was listed as a prisoner at Fort Niagara on June,
1813.He built a home at St. Davids
which was destroyed when the American army burned the village in 1814.He rebuilt the house in 1815 and his family
lived there until the early 1900’s.